As i lay on my bed.
random thoughts come in my Head.
Too many things, too many ideas.
somewhat serious, n some bakwaas.

I don't wanna turn old n blue...
I wanna choose my own view.
view with which i can look at the world.
view with which, I want the world to look at me.

Time is passing by, as fast it can be.
I am chasing or being chased, Ohh I can't see.
Want to make, my dreams come true.
Want to keep dreaming, everytime something new.

End of day, whom should i doubt.
My Karma or destiny at whom to shout.
Success , Peace , Happiness, Health or Money.
Bits of everything, God can you give me.
I pray to him, to show me truthful direction.
Make my life balanced and everyday gimme some fun.

Its the climb

Yeah, i always feel inspired, whenever i listen to this song "The Climb" by Miley Cyrus

If you still haven't, Here's the youtube video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NG2zyeVRcbs

Song "The Climb" Lyrics by Miley Cyrus

I can almost see it

That dream I am dreaming

But there's a voice inside my head saying

"You'll never reach it"

Every step I'm taking

Every move I make feels

Lost with no direction

My faith is shaking

But I gotta keep trying

Gotta keep my head held high

There's always gonna be another mountain

I'm always gonna wanna make it move

Always gonna be a uphill battle

Sometimes I'm gonna have to lose

Ain't about how fast I get there

Ain't about what's waiting on the other side

It's the climb

The struggles I'm facing

The chances I'm taking

Sometimes might knock me down

But no, I'm not breaking

I may not know it

But these are the moments that

I'm gonna remember most, yeah

Just gotta keep going

And I, I got to be strong

Just keep pushing on

'Cause there's always gonna be another mountain

I'm always gonna wanna make it move

Always gonna be a uphill battle

Sometimes I'm gonna have to lose

Ain't about how fast I get there

Ain't about what's waiting on the other side

It's the climb, yeah!

There's always gonna be another mountain

I'm always gonna wanna make it move

Always gonna be an uphill battle

Somebody's gonna have to lose

Ain't about how fast I get there

Ain't about what's waiting on the other side

It's the climb, yeah!

Keep on moving, keep climbing

Keep the faith, baby

It's all about, it's all about the climb

Keep the faith, keep your faith, whoa

The lyrics of this songs manifest a strong and deep meaning and embroidered to inspire the real you within yourself.

Like any other commoner, i have faced lots of ups and downs. Every time you feel like relaxing, life proposes a new challenge for you and as a fighter you take up this challenge.

But does it really matter to you, if you win or lose... what really matters is the trip along this challenge.

If i sit back and start recalling, which are the things that i have achieved till now in life and which ones i have failed to. The very thought of recalling, reminds me of the memories that are close to my heart, the few important decisions that i made and the mistakes that i repent, which i shall never redo.

A whole aura of emotions flows within me and i feel great !!

My sincere thanks to miley cyrus and the lyricist of this song.

“The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.” 
― Elbert Hubbard

njoii...

~banji

5 Things i learnt from my new Addiction

Mark Zuckerburgs post on Facebook inspired me on the eve of New Year to learn something new this year. So i decided to challenge myself and learn cycling. Yes i am 33 years old now and still scared to ride a cycle as i missed this opportunity in my childhood. Whatever be it, i went ahead and bought a bike and started practicing at late night. Within a week, i was comfortable to ride on the empty lanes of azad nagar.

 I started pursuing this passion over long routes and I never knew cycling would get me addicted, as every sunday night i started taking on longer circuits. In yesterday (10th April 2016), few things i learnt in the circuit that i followed.

1.  You will get to know your Destination, only when you get out of the house.

Just wear your shoes and leave, sometimes too much planning will keep you seated. Best part of cycling is you don't need to plan where to go, you just leave and the route picks you up.

2. Guidance arrives automatically when on a rough patch

I had taken Aarey Colony route, which does not have any street lights and my bike is beginners bike and not equipped with any lights. It was completely dark and i was biking in middle of jungle, My only source of guidance were the luminsance emitted from the vehicles speeding by me.

3. Keep Faith, Don't Get Scared and Follow your path

Continuing through the earlier point, there were times, when there were no vehicles passing by and it was pitch dark. I was getting scared at times of falling down or something hitting me in middle of the Aarey Jungle, but my inner conscious asked me to focus and my faith in myself gave a hope on yes i will make it.

4. Keep up the momentum and keep reminding yourself to sustain at every interval

I consider myself still a beginner and face a lot of challenge when it comes to climbing an inclination.  Only if i loose my momentum when climbing up hill, i am sure i will drop out and hence it became very much essential to sustain my impulse and kept reminding myself just 10 more meters of uphill even though i knew it was more than 100 meters, but if i had not done that i was sure of failing and not able to pick up from that point

5. Success always comes Home

Finally, tired and wet with sweat , i was just about 1 km away and slipped due to a turn by a rickshaw. But luckily i was not injured. I was safe and was success to complete my route safely and extremely happy to reach home, take shower and have dinner. Point is you will only enjoy your success when you have someone to share it with it. Otherwise it is just a memory which you cannot reminiscence unless people and places  around you stay in future for your grey matter to reminiscence.

Expectations

Expectation is a funny lil word.
When with reference to your expectations from me, 
it cuts me with a sword.
When with reference to my expectations from you, 
it sounds absurd.
Expectation fulfills noone's expectation.
Its just another english word

WFH !! does it really benefit ?

In today's world of SFs (oops Short Forms or acronyms), most of us must have heard WTF, but have you heard WFH ?
I guess not, then let me reveal, its a acronym coming from the Corporate world and stands for "Work from Home".

I recently got into a new job which demanded a lot more travel than my earlier job. yeah yeah, i know you must be wondering, how dumb of me to choose a job which has more travel than my existing one. I had my own personal reasons to do so. But yes, i had given a thought to 'Travel' too before making up my mind.
I thought that after all in this world of Technology and Internet, it is too easy to work from home when you got ammunition like "Office Communicator or Lync 2010", "Email Outlook", "Mobile Phones", "IMs like gtalk and Skype", "Webinar, Virtual Meetings", etc. in your arsenal.

Any time worshiper like me must have heard this quote...
"Lost wealth may be replaced by industry, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance or medicine, but lost time is gone forever. - Samuel Smiles" and i wanted to use it wisely.

It was really exciting to join new Office (actually my second innings - as i worked in Comverse 2 years back). However the most irritating part was a lot of my time was getting wasted in travelling, all courtesy to Mumbai Municipal Corp a.k.a BMC. Although its a separate discussion altogether to debate on "Why the rate of modernization(oops development) of Mumbai Infrastructure is far below the rate at which corporates are expanding their footprint in this fincancial Capital of India ? and why does it take 2 hours to travel 20kms when ideally it should be taking just 30 mins ?"

I wanted to take control on this dripping tap of time and use my time wisely, that why i decided to experiment by Working from Home today. But question is "did it really help me, did i really use my time efficiently ?", lets see...

Working from Home has its own benefits.

• You get punctual. you can literally start working as soon as you wake up ;)
• You can be available literally 24X7 (flexible schedule) for workaholics like me and work with colleagues across different time zones (like in my situation)
• You save on company resources like desk, AC, printer, etc.
• You help environment, by saving on fuel.
• You start getting richer as you save on time, and time is money. :P
• You are close to your family.
• You get to have yummy home cooked food.

Yes all this was really the case, but after all the bottom-line is "Was i able to complete my to-do list at the same speed and efficiency as i should have done when in Office ?"

Answer in my case is "Today it was No". Yes, i would like to press on the word 'today', as i don't want the 'No' to suppress my such future explorations.

I know, you must be anxious to know why "No". So here are the reasons.

• Firstly, you get lethargic and feel sleepy after having homely food. (unless your mom/wifey is not a real good cook :P)
• Since you have abundant time and no pressure to catch that train and get back home - your pace of getting stuff done slows down.
• TV, Social Media, Home discussions act as the Bermuda Triangle for your work.
• You miss those Office Jokes and Lunch with colleagues.
• Face 2 Face discussions with Colleagues is also important and at times the ammunition i appreciated about cannot supersede F2F.

Lastly i would like to conclude by saying "All depends upon you(me) on whether i work smartly & efficiently at home overcoming the above issues and thereby using time wisely or spending a lot of time travelling. Finally you(i) have to take the call and you(i) am mature and responsible enough to decide this."

PS : Reader's discretion is advised. :P

njoii...

~banji

Prime Integrator : A Car with the Driver

This one revolves around the term of 'Prime Integrator' in the ICT (Information and Communications Technology) World.

Once during a Operator's Technology Day, all big vendors like HP, Oracle, IBM, Ericsson had come to present their Solutions, including my company.

All the vendors presented their Technology Solutions and concluded with a laud of Appreciation from the audience.

It was our turn now, and our CTO (Chief Technology Officer) went on the stage to present our Technology Landscape. To our surprise it went well ;), after all in these kind of events, its all about jargons n talking 30,000 feet above.

During the Q&A session, one of the Customer's Attendee asked a interesting Question.

Here's the verbatim.

Customer : "Dear ABC, in your Solution, you have shown the platform from HP, Database from Oracle and Application from Tech Mahindra, I wonder what Solution you are presenting to us"

All of us stunned and curious and what will our CTO reply to such a tricky question.

C.T.O : "Dear, thats a very good and valid question. I would like to answer that with a analogy.
If you see HP is providing a platform which is like a Car, Oracle is providing a carrier for the Car, Tech Mahindra is providing keyless access to the Car, but what is really lacking is a learnt and experienced driver to drive the car to your required destination. We are providing you the driver who shall ensure you that the car can be used the way you want. Yes we are the Prime Integrator's with a multi-vendor experience"

After this all we could see and hear were smiling faces and sounds of applaud.

Cheers !!

njoii.
~banji.

Forgot to replace INR with USD($) sign in Proposal

Our Customer once floated a RFP (Request for Proposal) and we were required to submit a proposal to  their requirement before the weekend.

Our team started to work in full force to prepare a Solution, do the costing and get our best to win this deal. One week's time was too less for that mammoth requirement but somehow we managed to get a solution and final proposal at the eleventh hour.

Our Sales Manager took a speedy run to the Customer's Office to submit the Proposal on Friday at last minute and upon submission heaved a sigh of relief.

We had a mini team dinner in appreciation of our high spirited team efforts. Next day (Saturday) our Sales Manager was reviewing the proposal and he was surprised to discover of a big typo in there where he had forgotten to replace INR with '$'(USD) sign. He was now tensed, the damage was done and nothing could be done until monday.

The next monday, Customer's SCM (Supply Chain Manager) called our Sales Manager to acknowledge that the price that we had quoted was 10 times higher than their expectation.

Our Sales Manager took a fall and didn't know whether to laugh or cry, simmering down he answered "Please return the proposal, if allowed we will resubmit a new one with same values in US Dollars as i had forgotten to replace INR with USD sign in our proposal template".

Listening to this, the SCM fainted.

LOL

njoii.
~banji